The door opened and Tony walked in. As with all prisoners held in police cells, his appearance had started the downward slide away from respectability. His hair was unruly and unkempt. He had a day’s growth of stubble, an oddly pathetic patchwork of dark and silver. He wasn’t young any more, she thought with a stab of sadness. Because that meant she wasn’t either. His clothes were crumpled and creased and he’d begun to look more criminal than the average citizen.

His face lit up when he saw Carol on her own. ‘It’s good to see you,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had a problem with my own company, but time passes slowly when you’ve nothing to read.’

‘And no computer games to play.’ There was no lightness in her tone, no room to interpret her remark as friendly. ‘I looked through the newspaper archive. Obviously, it’s not definitive…’

‘But almost every family still puts a death notice in the paper. Undertakers steer them in that direction, and it’s a shortcut to let friends and workmates know the funeral details.’

‘And the Sentinel Times publishes photos in its online edition.’

He grinned. ‘Of course. I wondered how you were going to weed out the blondes. I’d forgotten about that. Imagine what a miserable job that would have been until recently – calling up the recently bereaved and going, “Was your wife blonde? And was it natural?”’

She couldn’t help a wry smile. She’d taken part in some crass inquiries over the years, because sometimes that was the only way to secure the information they needed. She wasn’t sorry about this particular forward march of technology. ‘So, there are two death notices and one news item that seem to me to fit the bill.’ She turned the laptop to face him and slid the photocopies across.

He read everything through once, then repeated the process more slowly. He rubbed his chin, the rasp of his hand across the stubble clearly audible. Then he pushed the photocopies back towards Carol. ‘No death notice that corresponds to this?’

She shook her head. ‘Not that I could find. Her parents live in York, though. So maybe it was in the local paper there.’

Tony looked grim. ‘If it was, it will have been put there by her parents. Not by the husband.’

‘What makes you say that?’

‘I think this might be the one.’

‘Why?’

He shifted the laptop so they could both see the screen. ‘This one first. She had enough freedom to be out there playing darts in a pub. If I’m right, this guy is a control freak. He’s never going to let her out of the house with a bunch of other women to have a social encounter that doesn’t include him.’

‘That’s what I thought too. And the other death notice?’